As a young man finishing his studies at Morehouse College in 1948, Martin Luther King Jr. referred to Georgia’s favorite son, the recently deceased Gov. Eugene Talmadge. Despite high intelligence, King said, Talmadge preached segregation and bigotry. “Are those the types of men we call educated?” he asked. “We must remember that intelligence is not enough. ... Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education.”

Speaking to students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia in October 1967 — six months before his assassination in Memphis, Tenn. — King noted how the world had changed. “My young friends,” he said, “doors are opening to you — doors of opportunities that were not open to your mothers and your fathers,” he said. “Be ready to face these doors as they open.”

Late last year, results of standardized tests of student knowledge in some 65 countries showed a troubling achievement gap between American pupils and their counterparts abroad. Chinese students ranked first in math, reading and science, while their U.S. counterparts scored 23rd or 24th.

It was “a wake-up call,” said Arne Duncan, President Obama’s education secretary. “We can quibble,” he said, “or we can face the brutal truth that we’re being out-educated.”

While that may be true, other forces are at work. Controlling for race and ethnicity, Robert J. Samuelson of The Washington Post found that while white American students scored on a par with peers in Canada, New Zealand and elsewhere, blacks and Hispanics lagged. Samuelson spoke of a “legacy of history and culture” and the “broken homes, street violence, indifference to education ... that discourage learning and inhibit teaching.”

Back in 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. anticipated that strong character traits would overcome that legacy. “Study hard,” he pleaded to the middle-school students from inner-city Philadelphia. “Burn the midnight oil; ... don’t drop out of school. ... In spite of your economic plight, in spite of the situation that you’re forced to live in — stay in school.”

King’s vision of self-improvement and self-actualization remains elusive today, as minority achievement still sags and dropout rates soar. On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, let his words inspire the next generation of students to do better.

“When you discover what you will be in your life,” he exhorted, “do such a good job that the living, the dead and the unborn couldn’t do it any better.”